Dark Snow
by don'tkillme
Summary: "'You know I can take whatever I want.' His voice was even, emotionless. Words she had heard before. Only then he was looking for pieces of a map - now she sensed the hidden subtext bubble to the surface." The fight in the forest goes quite differently for Rey and Kylo Ren, and the consequences stretch beyond what either could have expected.
1. Chapter 1

"You know I can take whatever I want."

His voice was even, emotionless. Words she had heard before. Only then he was looking for pieces of a map - now she sensed the hidden subtext bubble to the surface. She felt herself stiffen, her muscles clench. He was holding her in place, his face slack and unreadable. She struggled to reach something, anything to use as a weapon, but her body was motionless. Caught in a panic, watching him stride closer to her, Rey's mind was just as static. He was appraising her now, his dark eyes cooly matching her own. The snow settled on his shoulders, downy and white, blanketing the world in a pall of quiet. Their breathing was heavy and ragged in the silence.

Ren's face was close to hers now, close enough that she could see the drops of grey-green in his eyes, the matted black curls by his temples. She fought the urge to squeeze her eyes closed, to shut out the touch she was helpless to resist. Rey had feared this so often on Jakku, living alone in the desert, that she long ago promised herself to fight until the end. Only - only he didn't raise his hand, didn't come closer than half an arm's length, didn't make any movement at all, other than a thin, curious waver of his lips.

"I _can_ take whatever I want," he whispered. The sentence trailed away in the brisk air, hanging incomplete. There seemed to be an unspoken coda to his thought, one that Rey couldn't yet guess, couldn't yet explore. Suddenly she felt her body relax, become her own again. In an instant the saber was back in her hand, coursing and alive, ready to strike. Ren didn't move, merely glanced down placidly at the weapon, then back at her. Now she caught his meaning - he could _take_ what he wanted, but was allowing her to give it willingly.

If she moved fast enough she could kill him. Some kind of awful hesitation rooted her to the spot, stopping her from raising her arm in a final swing. "I know you feel it," he said softly. "You feel drawn to me."

"No," she protested, tears building inexplicably behind her eyes.

"I feel it too." His voice was so flat, so matter-of-fact. The snow whirled around them both, wrapping them in blue-white cold. She was terrified to move, both toward him and away from him. In her confusion she found herself probing his mind, reaching past his defenses to the memories buried beneath. She felt him resist for a moment, then - whether through his own surrender or the power of her own prodding - his thoughts and feelings opened to her in a heady rush. There it was, the desire and the anger, the hatred, the self-loathing, all laid bare. Swirls of rage and terrible uncertainty, the ache of being unwanted, the cloying sting of rejection. More than anything the sad, quizzical emptiness of being alone. And running through it, worst of all, an underlying current of earnest hope that he had found _another_.

She gazed up at him, shocked. Now the fury in his eyes was colored by hurt. She knew he felt her pity. It was the last thing he wanted, but he couldn't turn away. He, too, was fixed to the ground.

"I'll never be who you want," she said. "I can't." Now she felt him in _her_ head, pouring defiantly through her memories. Her abandonment, the long years in the sand, her own yearning for completeness through a stranger beyond the stars. Knowing what it felt like to want someone you didn't even know. He was almost gloating, satisfied. Rey heard his voice within her. _We are more alike than you can admit._ "Get out of my head!" It felt like she was screaming but in truth her voice was wavering, and her protest sounded weak even to her.

Somehow he was closer now, too close. He gripped her arm with a gloved hand and she jumped, shaking him off. Her pulse raced, her head dizzy. Conciliatory, as if in apology, his fingers softly grazed her shoulder and up her neck, pushing away her hair from her face. Somehow she didn't stop him.

"Ren." She didn't know if she was pleading for him or pleading for herself to run. A smile curved at the corner of his mouth.

"Is that what you're going to call me?" Now he was cupping her face, looking longingly at her mouth. She could still feel his thoughts, the desire and the disbelief. Something was telling him to ignore her protests, to be rough and hard, but another part, a better part, ignored it.

Slowly, as if in a dream, she reached up to trace her hand across his chest. His warmth was lost in the snow, but she could feel the muscles underneath his black cloak, the staccato pulsing of his heart. The distance between them closed again. _Drawn to him_ \- that was the only description of the need she now felt to be close, to fold into him. The sudden, unexpected intimacy of it was overwhelming. Not just her own hesitant touches, or being held by him, but _feeling_ his want, his hope, the rawness of his long-buried affection. All of this as she inexplicably perceived - and he reveled in - the hum of her own confused satisfaction.

Rey felt herself softening as he held her gaze, his eyes heavy lidded. Finally, in a too-quick magnetic moment, his lips met hers. Her arms looped around him and he pulled her against him, the full length of their bodies joined. In his grasp her hand slid down to his hip, where it came back slick and red with blood.

"Ignore it," he said roughly. Now his hand covered hers again, guiding it back to his shoulders, his waist, his chest. Again she sensed an unspoken addition to his words. _Please_. He felt alien and familiar at once, like her home, the blue-green island of her imagination. In another time she didn't know if she could have stopped. But the blood had shaken her out of her reverie, and horror washed over her as she awakened to herself curled into Kylo Ren, her mouth upturned to his, her hand a reminder of the murder of his own father.

"This isn't you." Rey sensed him feel her revulsion more than hear her, and he staggered back. The resulting cloud of hurt and rage swarmed through her head, furiously pounding with pain at her refusal.

"You can't know who I am." Ren's voice was level, but she knew he was struggling to control himself, fighting not to lunge at her. It was shocking and sobering how quickly she feared him again. He must have sensed it, because she was filled with his remorse. Ren stretched out his arm to her, drops of blood muddying the snow at his feet. "Come back to me." As soon as the words left him she felt how much he hated their weakness, but also how much he hoped they persuaded her. Rey realized he was holding his lightsaber in his other hand, sheathed but ready.

"Why? Because you want me, or because you want to kill me?" He didn't answer, and now his mind was closed to her. Rey felt him try and freeze her again as he followed her glance, but his attempt slipped away, feeble.

Suddenly the earth began to crack, to roil and shake. She reeled backwards, struggling to keep her footing as the ground shifted under her. Above her head a tree shed a pile of snow, and once her eyes had been cleared from the white Rey realized that she was now separated from Kylo Ren by a literal gulf, one too wide for either of them to cross. The convulsing of the planet had torn a long, black chasm between them and thrown Ren to his knees. She could still see him through the flurries, a bent streak of black, his hand clutching the wound in his side.

 _Rey_. She didn't know if it was him in her head or her imagination, but either way it sounded like defeat. She backed away, feeling his gaze on her one last time before she fled into the forest, and back to Finn.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** Thank you for all the wonderful feedback! I feel so very honored. Also, this chapter was reuploaded with a few minor grammatical edits.

* * *

The hum of the machines in the medic bay was comforting, almost. It reminded Rey of the rush of the wind over the fallen starships in the desert, low and whining. She studied Finn's face, the way his lips turned up at the corners, the way he could touch her with his smile.

She was flush with shame, remembering how he had taken her hand on Jakku, the way he had looked up at her breathlessly from the sand - _are you okay?_ \- as if she was the one who needed saving. She resolved to see him again before she left, hoping he was awake, wanting to take his hand and feel his cheek against hers as she apologized. _With him I can be good_ , she thought.

"Your face could scare a wookiee." Rey turned towards the voice behind her. "They said he'll be fine, you know. It's just going to take a little time." It was the pilot, the one Finn knew. The same man whose jacket was now lying, sliced in two, on the side of the bed.

"I know." Poe sat across from her. She knew she shouldn't, but she was charmed by his teasing confidence. She guessed a lot of women were.

"Not too many people could come back from facing a Sith Lord by themselves."

"He was so brave." The memory of Finn running back to her in the snow, screaming her name as she struggled to reply through a haze of pain and fear and surprise.

"I wasn't just talking about Finn." He was studying her now, trying to meet her eyes. She refused. Her guise of troubled shock had worked on the Resistance so far, but Rey knew it was only a matter of time. To her relief, though, Poe didn't choose that moment to push her. Instead, he clapped her on the shoulder as he rose to leave, reminding her to count him as a friend.

Rey shared a familiar silence with Finn a little longer. It was over an hour until she went back to her room, after she felt the gloom of night climb over the walls of the base.

Later, Rey was shocked that _she_ was to be the one to find Luke Skywalker. Just weeks ago she was staring into the emptiness of the desert, imagining adventure as every ship rose into the red-orange sky. Now she was at the center of a myth, and she wasn't sure if she was ready. Not just ready - _worthy_. Could she be the hope of the Resistance when she couldn't even resist the dark in her first real test? Even more shameful was that Rey couldn't bring herself to tell them what really happened between her and Kylo Ren. Instead she pushed it away, buried it, and promised herself that she wouldn't - couldn't - think of him again.

That vow became almost impossible after her first night on the base.

 _Rey_. She knew that voice. It came to her, soft and unassuming, like a memory. She felt herself answer not with words but with a feeling - relief. Cool smugness touched her.

 _You would have felt it if I died._ She knew she was afraid, was horrified and appalled that Ren had found her, but everything came much more gently in her dreams. Even his presence was blurred, pastel and muted like a watercolor. She tried to see him through the veil of time and space, but all she could make out was a silhouette of darkness wreathed in black stars. She would have known if he died - Rey wasn't sure if that was comforting.

"Would you know if I died too?" Now it was his turn to reply wordlessly, to blanket her with affirmation in a vapor of sadness. As usual, he revealed too much. Rey sensed that she filled his world with grey, swayed it with uncertainty. The future he had laid out for himself was no longer so clear.

 _I know that you're going to him._ _Skywalker._ What was it there that she felt, something pulling at the corner of her mind - was it hatred? Regret? A kind of envy?

"Come with me then." His answer was swift and cold.

 _You know I will not._

"Then why are you in my dream?" The words drifted to him with syrupy slowness, dragging through the distance between them. Rey was alone again.

The next day Finn still had still not awoken, and she could feel agitation for her to leave building amongst the Resistance. _I just want to speak to him_ , she thought. Just once more, to hold onto another good memory. But Finn was still closed-eyed and motionless, and she was forced to talk to the empty air. With desperate curiosity she wondered if she could feel him, the same way she had felt - _still felt_ \- Kylo Ren. She closed her eyes and let her mind go blank, taking a deep breath that filled her lungs like ether. _Finn_ \- his name echoed in emptiness until she placed him, a faint stab of blue in a world of black. He disappeared from her almost instantly, so quickly that she questioned if it was him. Nothing like Ren, not at all.

"We will see each other again," Rey said finally. "I believe that."

She couldn't wait any longer. With the coordinates of the planet set in the Falcon she left to find Luke Skywalker, and to try and leave the doubts about herself behind.

* * *

It was night on Skywalker's planet when she landed. Rey gazed desperately into the darkness, hoping for any kind of light, even just a hint of fire glow, but the world around her was relentlessly black. She would have to wait until morning to find him.

Rey stretched resignedly outside the cockpit. The cushions in the Falcon were warm and soft, softer than her bed on Jakku. Than _anything_ on Jakku, really. Years of scavenging had programmed her to sleep through long stretches of quiet, and she felt herself drifting off, weighted with the sand of sleep.

"You were waiting for me." It was _him_ , of course, but now he was here, just as real as he had been in the woods. Her heart raced as she took him in, his stillness, his unreadable dark eyes. Ren spoke with his usual evenness, veined now with pompous satisfaction. Rey would have hated him, but his slyness was hiding another, subtler feeling - an awful, painful hopefulness.

"I can't help it if you invade my dreams."

"No," he said softly, matter-of-fact. "You can't." He stepped closer to her in the boundless, in-between space of her sleep. She didn't move, trying to temper the familiar compulsion to touch him, melt into him. Ren had no such shyness. He pressed his hands against her face, against her temple, against the round bottom of her lip. He wasn't wearing gloves, and even just the warmth of his fingers was magnetic. He felt her waver and paused, burning doubt between them.

Rey must have been the one to pull him against her this time. Kissing him was new, dreadful, wonderful. Not just the heady instancy of his mouth on hers, or the way that his hands skimmed across her shoulders, her hips, her stomach. It was how he seemed to breathe her in, like she was mist settling over him in a veil of light. Around them, in the chimera of her dream, it began to snow.

An eddy of flurries whirled around them in a haze of silver. When she pulled away he was a single spot of darkness in an endless field of white.

 _Come with me_. His forehead was still pressed against hers, his breath smoking in the ice. Rey's want dissolved in a single exclamation of betrayal - _Finn_.

The snow was gone, and Ren was a shadow of fading sunlight. She felt the loneliness, the outrage of her answer.

"Your friends aren't here. Not anymore. _"_ He couldn't hide his clumsily masked afterword. _I would never leave you like them._

"Why not?" The question hit him with bubbling surprise. Ren's answer overcame her, timid and tender, before she felt him push it away. Confusion replaced it, then frustration, then anger.

"That's not what I'm here to tell you," he finally replied. She frowned, trying to read him again. His refusal was sharp, even painful.

"Then what _are_ you here to tell me?" Ren didn't answer. Fury and confusion filled the silence between them, and she wasn't even sure he had a reply. Rey finally broke the impasse. "What you feel for me doesn't come from darkness. It can't."

"You know nothing." He stepped back from her and he was almost gone, fading away into sleep. She reached through the fog to pull him back, her hand tight around his wrist.

"I know _this_ ," Rey said, defiant. Her yield of his mind poured through him. His longing for her, how she lingered in the corner of him, a golden apparition. A flash of his mother, a sparkling laugh, sunlight touching a planet in soft yellow-green. The image of a lake, lavender sand, a warm, downy breeze. Water and waves and sweet, overbrimming _happiness_. How being with her was like being there again, wrapped in belonging. How he hated it and wanted it and _loved_ it, loved -

Ren jerked his arm away, his breathing rough and jagged with outrage.

"You think you've seen everything?" His voice was low and cold, dangerous. "You have no idea what I've done. What I _want_. No idea what I desire from you." The sudden numbness in his eyes, even in her dream, swelled her with fear. "I'll show you, Rey."

His hand flew to her forehead, and she exploded with agony. The images flashed through her head with dizzying speed.

Finn's face, his eyes full with unshed tears, betrayal, hurt. Ren's surge of amusement and delight as his lightsaber hummed to life. The acrid, gruesome smell of death. The bodies of her friends, tumbled over one another in an open grave. The Resistance finally shattered, and Ren wrapped in darkness and glutted with victory.

And after it all her alone in a room, waiting. The hiss of the door as Kylo Ren entered. Instead of striking him, hurting him, _hating_ him, Rey reached her fingers under his mask with hungry anticipation. He pushed her onto the bed, his gentleness gone. Their cautious, tender kiss in the forest bent to raw possession. His hand slid across her throat, twisting her head to meet his mouth. He moved lower, grazing his teeth against her collarbone, her ribcage, the thin dip of her belly. Her pants slipped down as he gripped her hips, pressing his face between her legs.

She felt his need to have, to subdue. To take. There was nothing left within her that wanted to resist. She surrendered, her hands clawing his back, losing herself. It wasn't love between them now, or even the promise of it - it was black lust, greed, a frenzy of rage and hurt. Where there should have been revulsion, Rey couldn't help but sense that she had never felt so...so...

"So completed." Ren's voice, indecipherably blank.

Rey was bent over, heaving, crying. "Get away from me," she whispered hoarsely, but Kylo Ren was already gone.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N:** I am so grateful, inspired, and motivated by your reviews, favorites, and follows!

Kylo Ren opened his eyes. The memory of her hung in the air, a rose-yellow sweetness. He ignored it. He had already shown her the unthinkable, anyway.

 _She would have gotten in the way_. He knew, somewhere inside him, that through her he would have been destroyed. Maybe not in battle or with the stab of a saber, but he would have been torn inside out just the same. He had felt her repugnance, her shock. _Better this way._ Now he could bury her, dismiss her, leave her for dead. The grayness of his world was satisfied. When they met again – for the final time, Ren resolved – either light or dark would win.

* * *

Rey couldn't sleep, not after last night. She lingered in the darkness of the Falcon, staring into nothingness, hoping for sunrise. Kylo Ren had really, truly _gone_ from her – as much as he could, anyway. _You would have felt it if I died._ If she squeezed her eyes shut and stilled her heart and strained to stretch across space, he was still a tiny, fluttering shadow in the corner of her. But a shadow was thankfully easy to ignore.

At dawn Rey stood at the base of a mountainous island, encircled by blue and shrouded in mist. Breathing in the air felt heavy, like she was dragging her lungs through water. A field of flowers, carmine and ice-white, bloomed at her feet. And just beyond, blurred by the sea, a stairway curled into the mountainside like a stone snake. There was nothing left for her to do but follow it.

The stairs rose up and up and up, coiling through the ridgeline. Rey was dazzled again by the endless green. Green like trees, and the thin film of algae on oasis water, and desert lightning, and moss and the edges of Ren's eyes – she stopped herself, appalled. _He is your enemy. He is darkness to you, danger to you. You hate him._ And she did, slick cardinal hate that threatened to overflow her. She felt Ren's crowing satisfaction as he killed Finn in his fantasy, and it disgusted her. But still he was there, the fluttering shadow. Still, somehow, a part of her.

She reached the top after passing through a hollow portal of stone, the world dizzyingly small beneath her. Rey's heart fell as she only discovered a brief expanse of trembling grass. She remained, just as she always was, alone.

* * *

"Why did you not kill the girl?" Kylo Ren blinked in surprise. He was good at hiding himself from Snoke, so good that he was convinced that Snoke wouldn't – _couldn't_ – see through his ruse. Clearly he was wrong.

"I thought we needed her," he said quickly. Next to him Hux rolled his eyes with derision and disbelief. Ren let anger course through him, overcome him, devour him as he closed his fist in the empty air. Hux sputtered and choked, his hands clawing at his neck, his eyes bulging with fear. Finally he collapsed to his knees, pale and spent, motionless, as Ren swept over his body to -

Ren sighed, coming back to the present and tempering his fury to annoyance. Though, if he were being truthful, under Ren's contempt lurked cold, electric fear. Was he really so transparent?

"She's powerful," Ren added almost lamely. "I felt it."

"Did you?" Snoke's voice was unsettlingly flat.

"She has darkness inside of her. I thought she could join us." Snoke remained still, passive.

"And now?"

"I was wrong. She's nothing, just weakness seduced by the light. I can – I _will_ destroy her."

"Will you, Kylo Ren?" Hux shifted uncomfortably next him, his knuckles white behind his back.

"I would do anything Supreme Leader, anything for the First Order-"

"Did you resolve this before or after you allowed her to escape?" Kylo Ren didn't have a chance to answer. He crumbled, defeated, as pain ripped through his head.

* * *

Rey caught her breath. Something awful passed through her, like a shadow across the sun. Pushing the uneasiness away, she caught a glimpse of a stone rising out of the grass.

At first she thought it was a grave by the way it overlooked the sea, the loneliness of the marker. As she approached she saw that it was just a single stone among many, lining a well-worn path that wrapped into the cavernous center of the mountain.

Darker and deeper it went, cool and damp, until she saw it, the temple in the forest. Silver stone wrapped in ropes of vines, towering into the trees, melting into the leaves like an illusion. The door glowed soft blue-white. It felt long abandoned but somehow recently disturbed. She sensed it, something pulling her, commanding her, to enter.

In the center of the courtyard was an enormous tree, its trunk striped with amber and gold. Long branches curved overhead, a penumbra of fawn and white flowers, carpeting the ground in ivory. Rey's footfalls were softened. She approached it hesitantly, wonderingly. She couldn't resist the need to touch it.

As soon as her hand brushed the trunk she was shocked by memory. Digging into the desert sand in the stillness of night, scooping her hands through the warmth left by the sun. Kylo Ren's face wet with ice, his saber meeting hers in a crackle of purple.

Now images she didn't recognize, but that felt right. Imminent. A black figure on the floor, writhing and twisting in pain. _Bring her to me_. Rain and lightening against a rocky expanse, tumbling and twisting into the dark water of a lake. The bright interior of a starship, grey bullets of hyperspace, her hand grasping for a weapon. Someone screaming, distorted with hurt and panic and anger – _pick it up!_ A hand on her shoulder, peaceful, still.

 _It was not him_ , _no, not him_ , a voice she didn't know whispered, echoing inside of her. _It is you_.

* * *

Kylo Ren didn't bother to push himself off the floor. Warm, salty metal filled his mouth, dripping onto the tile in pools of red-black. Somehow he had bitten his tongue, and now he also felt heavy, wrong. He dimly sensed Hux leave sometime long before, and now he was alone in the chamber with Snoke. The hologram glimmered in the light, making his eyes ache. Blinking, the enormity of Snoke was doubled, tripled, quadrupled.

"You surprise me." Ren tried hard to drag in a breath to answer, but he was too slow. "I thought you had rid yourself of all attachments. Your father's blood was still wet when you fell to the seduction of the light."

"I…I still," The spots in Ren's eyes wouldn't clear. "I still feel the power of the darkness-"

"Your sacrifice was meaningless, Kylo Ren. You have failed." Ren felt something inside himself break, pour open. Failed. Never good enough, rejected, lost, suspended, another, _Rey_ –

"Bring her to me." Snoke flickered and dissolved, and the pain finally ended. Ren panted, pulling himself to his feet in the emptiness of the chamber.


	4. Chapter 4

Kylo Ren was alone, eyes closed, the taste of blood in his mouth. _Bring her to me_. His ears were still ringing, undone by his own failure. This _girl_ had unraveled his future, his plans, all that he had destroyed and sacrificed for his legacy. A parentless, pointless, _nothing_ that had somehow succeeded in burrowing into his mind and staying there, a sea-salt speck of white in the black.

Ren grit his teeth, shutting out the seduction, the tender voice within him that whispered the _girl_ was the center of his kaleidoscopic future. The bright, baffling obsession he harbored since he felt her on Takodana collapsed into Snoke's plans much too easily, the worlds colliding too fast. If only he could have stayed at the fringes of her for longer, a ghost in the forest of her dreams.

Ren couldn't abandon himself yet. He was compelled, after all he had done, to complete his mission. That meant finding her, feeling her, with a subtlety so gentle that she wouldn't sense his invasion at all. It didn't take him long – it never did.

 _Rey was humming, dipping her head under the ocean. The water was warm, weightless, like a second skin. She was a desert dweller, of course, but she learned to swim as a child in the salty, knife-thin geyser pools of the outlerlands. Happiness glowed through her, illuminating her, like the sun on her face. Rey was a sweet flush of heat that burned through Kylo Ren like a fever._

She faded from him, so slowly that he realized he was grasping at her echo across space. Ren shuddered, his eyes wet. So that was it then, a fleck of a planet on the outer rim. He would do what was commanded of him, required of him. Kylo Ren always had. What Ren couldn't admit was that it was the light that he loved, that she tasted like fire.

* * *

Rey opened her eyes, combing her hands through her wet hair. A day and a night had passed since she landed on Ach-To, and she lingered only because she couldn't bear to return to the Resistance and face failure. Besides, she was used to being alone. And it made sense to wait, anyway, if Luke happened to return. She filled her time walking along the mountain paths, feeling the softness of the green leaves, plunging into the ocean. To be surrounded by water – she had realized one dream since she left Jakku, at least.

The next day Rey made the long march back to the Jedi temple, wanting to see the ruins a last time before she finally returned to the Resistance base. The walk alone was worth it, the ocean melting away into a smudge of grey-green on the horizon. When she finally reached the center of the mountain Rey paused, breathing heavily, taking in again the spire of silver and vines.

It was quiet, peaceful, and Rey dropped beneath the tree in the courtyard, looking up into its golden branches. She heard that Jedi would meditate, pool their powers within the Force. She wondered what it would have been like to be a student of Luke Skywalker, taught by a master. Rey pushed the thought from herself.

She tried to break the habit of dreaming long ago. It had only half-worked, she thought with a smile, remembering the weight of the X-wing pilot's helmet on her shoulders. Every day when she scratched another mark on her makeshift calendar she dreamed of a family who wanted her, waiting to return.

It was this feeling, this hollow longing for someone _good_ to happen to her, that brought Rey's mind back to Kylo Ren. She had never felt the same kind of hungry emptiness in someone before – in him it was so acute it was painful. She could tell by the self-conscious way he allied himself to the First Order that turning away from his family hadn't filled the void. No, it had only deepened it, made it worse. Rey sensed that now the part of him that cried for the light cried louder.

Rey pulled in a few even breaths. The way something in her called to Ren was a puzzle she couldn't solve. In so many ways he was her opposite, an upside down version of herself. That had to be where the link lay, a thread between the light in him and the darkness in her, both drawn to each other's negative.

In a nauseas moment of awakening, Rey realized she wouldn't have to wonder anymore. Kylo Ren was _here_ , on this planet, and she was his target.

* * *

Ren must have been hiding himself from her, masking the hint of him in her mind. Rey pulled herself up from the ground, heart racing, grasping her lightsaber. She didn't know what he wanted, but she could guess. He was always caught between two things that couldn't coexist with the other, and Rey would never, could never, give him both.

Kylo Ren was at the entrance to the temple now, hovering in the doorway, tall and black against the green. It was surreal, disorienting, to see him again after her dreams. He wasn't wearing his helmet. His dark eyes, ruffled hair, the sadness curving down the ends of his lips - it made his face hard to hate. Maybe that was why he wore the mask.

"What are you doing here?" It was a weak question, inane even, as soon as it came out of her mouth.

"I'm here to take you back with me." His voice was low, just as she remembered.

"To who? Snoke? The First Order? You know I won't go." She was facing him, heat high in her face, her eyes narrowed. She meant it to sound strong but her voice wavered. Rey thought he was going to come towards her, her heart jumping to her throat, but all he did was sit on the edge of a small pool. He didn't even look at her. Bent over, his hand skimming the water, he seemed small.

"I haven't been here in years." Ren's face was drawn, half in shadow.

"I know what you did. What happened at this place." He didn't move, didn't acknowledge what she said.

"Luke Skywalker isn't here. He left, didn't he?"

"I don't know." It was the truth. Ren glanced around the temple, and Rey sensed something else pulling at the center of him. "You're glad, aren't you? That you didn't have to face him?"

"What does it matter? I found who I was looking for," he said, still listlessly tracing the water. Rey backed away towards the door, wondering if he would let her leave.

"I'll find you." Now he met her eyes. "There is nowhere you can go. I sense you everywhere."

"What will they do if you take me back? Train me?" She paused, her voice catching. "Kill me?" Kylo Ren didn't answer. "Do you even know?" She caught a half-repressed confession. _I didn't plan past seeing you again_. Ren pushed it away before she could let it sink in, the yearning behind his slack face.

"I have orders," he said finally. "If you escape, I'll follow."

"I'll keep running." Kylo Ren stood up stiffly at that, glowering.

"You _must_ come with me." His hand flexed, his eyes hard on hers. Something was rising within him, dark and wrong and terrifying. Rey stepped backwards toward the temple.

"I'm not going anywhere." Kylo Ren's lightsaber roared to life, quivering with electricity.

"Then I'll have to take you." Rey's lightsaber was barely ignited as he charged towards her, swinging.

She met it with a crack, staggering backwards, struggling to keep her grip. She felt immediately that this was different than their fight in the forest. There had been an element of newness there, a kind of question in the way he approached her, toyed with her. Now his saber swung at her, impossibly fast.

Rey stabbed back at him, trying to fill herself with the peace of the Force, trying to keep up with his furious parries. Yellow leaves crunched under her feet, swirled in the air. They moved closer to the center of the courtyard, under the entwined tree branches. Her saber caught his shoulder somehow and he breathed so hard it hissed through his teeth. Blood bloomed in the gash, but still he raised his arm to jab at her, heady and erratic. His swing was so wide that Rey overcompensated, and in blocking him her lightsaber dragged across her thigh in a quick blur of blue.

Rey screamed, dropping to one knee. Her hand clutched at the wound, smoking, already cauterized. A flicker of regret passed over Ren's face. Rey somehow staggered to her feet, putting distance between them. He was looking at her intently, mind buzzing with so many thoughts, so many feelings, that it was impossible to decipher.

"I'll stop," Ren said, breathing heavily. "I'll stop if you leave with me now."

"So the First Order can make an example of me? I'd rather die here." Rey meant it.

"Why do you keep saying that? There's nothing for you here!" He was shouting now, swinging his lightsaber at the empty temple. "They've abandoned you, look! You're alone!" Rey shook her head, pushing away the tears building behind her eyes. "You've always been alone!"

"Don't," she whispered, backing towards the tree trunk.

"I know." Ren's voice was softer now. His dark eyes bored into hers. "I know you _feel_ it."

He was watching her, still but for his heaving chest. His black eyes were heavy, rimmed with red.

 _I do._ Rey bit her lip, looking into herself, summoning whatever strength she had left. Unexpectedly it was Kylo Ren who broke the surface of her thoughts, but not the Kylo Ren in front of her, eyes burning. No, it was the way Kylo Ren's hands had cupped her face, reverent, gentle. The way every part of him overflowed with longing, how even just the touch of her far-away presence in his mind felt homesick, comforting.

It was almost easy, now, what she had to do. Rey closed her eyes, took a breath, and dropped her saber.

For a moment Kylo Ren didn't react, _couldn't_ react. He dragged in a breath, mouth agape. "What are you doing?" His voice was hoarse, hardly louder than a whisper.

"If you need this so badly," Rey answered, "go ahead." Her leg buckled beneath her and she steadied herself against a branch. "I won't go with you, and I won't join you. This is all that's left." Ren didn't move. "Go on, you've done it before – killed someone you cared about."

"Pick it up." He was still unmoored by disbelief, still six or seven paces away. "Pick it up and fight me."

"No." Rey's heart was pounding, leaping into her throat.

"Pick it _up_!" Ren's voice rose, ending in a yell. He slammed his lightsaber against a nearby rock, sparks flying in the air. Rey shook her head.

"If this is what you want," Rey breathed, "do it." Ren's fingers tightened on the hilt of the saber. He was coming towards her now, his steps long and purposeful.

Rey squeezed her eyes shut, her stomach sick. She could sense him. His lightsaber, shaking and buzzing and unstable, hummed closer.

Finally there was silence, nothing at all, except for the soft rise and fall of their breath. Something hung tenuous in the long moment until she heard metal fall to the floor, roll away. Rey opened her eyes to Kylo Ren before her, black hair disheveled, eyes wide, boyishly lost. His hand was empty, his lightsaber on the ground.

"I can't," he stammered. His eyes blinked, half-filled with tears. "Rey," he choked, "I won't."

"I know."

"I'm sorry." It sounded like an apology for everything, somehow. Rey reached a hand up to his face, to the black hair streaked across his forehead. He leaned into her palm, closing his eyes.

There was relief in the way he finally pulled her to him, buried his head in her hair. Rey breathed him in, his heart pounding against her, his arms tight. Something warm and dreamlike drifted over her. The shadows seemed to fade, all the solitude and heartache and hurt made right. She could feel a change in him, in herself, like the empty spaces in them filled.

"What are we going to do?" Rey whispered softly, head still pressed against his chest.

"I don't know." But when faced with the choice, he had never wanted anything more than her.


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's Note: For anyone still reading this silly thing, thank you! I'm so sorry about the absurd amount of time between updates.**

Kylo Ren dismissed love as a weakness long ago, as something for the silly and sentimental. Men like him could not afford to love, to be driven by the whims of compassion or kindness. For him there was only white-cold power, the whipping winds of standing above the world.

Ben Solo, the foolish, anemic child, had known little of love. People said that his parents were a grand romance, but Ben wasted nights and nights peering down the stairway, the voices chasing away his sleep. Han and Leia occupied most of their time together arguing, and most of their time apart in the arms of someone else. Even a mother's love was limited, Ben thought, as he was abandoned to Luke Skywalker.

Desire was allowed, Kylo Ren later told himself. Hot, blood-beating want was acceptable, crushing his mouth against a woman he would never see again, who served only as a relief from the drumming in his ears and the emptiness of being alone. Yes, that was tolerable – except for the time that he had dragged his fingertips against her disappearing hand and whispered with a hateful plaintiveness _stay_. The word hung in the air, suspended by embarrassment. She looked back at him with red-rimmed eyes brimming with something – pity? Loathing? – before closing the door behind her.

Kylo Ren didn't visit another woman after that.

So when he first felt Rey in his head, when he carried her into his ship like a groom cradling his bride, he assumed that _want_ was all that lay between them. And when he confronted her again in the snow, watching her twist and turn away from him, chest heaving as she slipped farther into the forest, desire was the only motivation for following her. But something indefinable shifted when he reached up to cup her face, Rey's hand against his chest, marveling at the _something else_ between them.

And then, in that singular moment of quaking breath and half-repressed touch, all of his ideas about love melted away into her.

In the days and weeks that followed, where there was once terrible, wounded darkness, a dagger-thin glow settled. And now, stretched on the sofa in Luke's little cabin, staring at the ceiling, he had fallen into something dangerous and wonderful with the girl behind the door. He was desperate to be next to her, to curve around her like a shadow around a flame. He wanted nothing but to kiss her, to take her, to fold into her. But what would happen if he did? Wouldn't he destroy her, like the way everything good seemed to shatter at his touch? Wouldn't it be better if he left, forgot this little tryst, dismissed it as fantasy, and accepted whatever waited for him with Snoke?

To his surprise, for the first time in memory, Kylo Ren stared into the darkness and turned away. And just for that, he thought as he closed his eyes, he could stay with her forever.

* * *

It was strange, knowing that Kylo Ren was just there beyond the doorway. He was asleep, pressed against the pillows like the boy she imagined he was once. Rey, though, couldn't close her eyes.

She felt Kylo Ren's trust, his relief, at rejecting Snoke. It wrapped around him still as he slept, cool and comforting. Rey had never felt so unsure.

Yes, being with him felt right. No, not just right – being with him felt like the _only_ right, the only way that she could exist without waning into something else. Still, she wondered if she had been meant to reject the rightness offered by Kylo Ren, if in grasping his hand she emerged as a refraction of her intended self. She felt his darkness pulling at her like a thread waiting to unravel, hoping so desperately that she wouldn't lose herself in him. Though Ren had thrown his saber down and pressed her to him, when she closed her eyes she still saw the man in her dream, a shadow crowned in black stars.

"Rey," he had come up behind her, shaking her out of her thoughts. His hands were on her shoulders now, his touch hesitant. Rey tipped her head back to meet his eyes, the lips that pressed against her forehead. His brows were knitted together, mouth set. She still had never seen him smile.

"You're up." He sat across from her at the table. Kylo Ren spotted this place, the house on a crest of stone that Luke Skywalker must have once called home. After their long walk back from the temple, fingers entwined, she collapsed onto Luke's small bed. Ren lingered in front of the fire, his mind snapped shut, a mystery. Rey thought he would come to her, but she found him draped across the sofa in the morning, legs dangling over the end.

"I was up late, thinking." Ren drummed his fingers against the table. "You landed the Falcon here? Probably at the bottom of the mountain?"

"Yes."

"We should take it and leave. Go somewhere. We shouldn't have even stayed the night."

"Why not?" Ren looked at her with obvious eyes.

"My ship has a tracker. The First Order will be expecting me back, expecting _us_ back. When we don't return they'll come looking for us." Rey sighed, her head in her hands.

"Where then? Surely you don't mean we should join the Resistance?"

"No. I certainly _don't_ mean that." He dropped his eyes, his voice hard. Rey reached across the table to his hand, threaded her fingers through his.

"Is that a no for now or a no forever?" Kylo Ren didn't answer, just stared down at their hands joined.

"Rey," he said finally, dragging his thumb across the back of her palm, "you don't regret this, do you?" He was looking at her again now, his eyes filled with something indefinable. She felt it, his fear of her answer. _Please say no._

"No," she said, squeezing his hand. "I don't." Rey smiled, but hoped her mind was not as easy to read as his.

* * *

They decided on Coruscant. A few other places were mentioned – Jakku, even, though First Order interest there was too strong now – until Kylo Ren suggested Coruscant softly and slowly, with a strange expression on his face. Rey wrinkled her nose, trying to place the name.

"Coruscant?" She remembered the planet from a postcard she found in the sand, a picture of jewel-blue neon towers stretching endlessly into the sky. And later from a swaggering gambler at Nima Outpost, who bragged about winning a high-stakes game of sabacc deep in the Coruscant underworld. A place so black, he said with glinting eyes, that those who never left claimed the sun was a legend. Rey shuddered at that, watching her sun pebble the dunes with shadow. She couldn't imagine living in the dark.

"Yes," Ren replied. "The capital of the Old Republic."

"Do you mean to hide in the underworld there?" Ren frowned, and Rey thought she almost saw a smile hug the corners of his mouth.

"Not if we don't have to. What do _you_ know of the Coruscant underworld, anyway?"

"Not much," Rey admitted, crossing her arms defensively. "Just things I've heard. Don't assume I don't know anything about the galaxy, Kylo Ren." Ren did smile now. Thin and a little unsteady, boyishly shy, but still a smile.

"I would never assume that." He was looking out the window at the rain, at the mist shrouding the world in heather. Rey twisted towards him at the table, aching to see him smile again.

"Where, then?" It took him a moment to answer.

"My mother still has a house there. Several houses, probably. I imagine an imperial residence, too." He trailed off, eyes back on the plumes of rain. Rey frowned.

"An imperial residence? What do you mean?"

"As princess of Alderaan." Ren took in her shock with placid eyes. "You didn't know?"

"She only called herself 'general.'" Kylo Ren reached out to her, tangled her hand in his.

"She would. It doesn't matter," he said quietly. Rey freed her fingers to touch his arm, the side of his face, the thin curls of hair behind his ear. If only the flickering light in him would catch, ignite into flame.

"I wish you'd smile again," she whispered. Ren gazed down at her, eyes soft.

"Then kiss me again." Rey breathed in, her head swimming in the wan light of morning.

She reached up to brush her lips against his, softer than she meant. Ren kissed her back gently, still restrained, almost still unsure. Finally she buried her hands in his hair, pulled him closer, kissed him harder. After a few slow, honeyed seconds they pulled apart, foreheads still together, grinning into each other's mouths.

"Better," she whispered. He just kissed her again, lifting her onto the windowsill. Rey wrapped her legs around him, absorbing the hungry way he held her, how demandingly he was gripping her waist. With his mouth on hers he was endearingly transparent. She felt suddenly everything that she had only guessed at, all the heavy hesitation and self-loathing and need behind his touch.

Ren groaned at the closeness of them, tipping her too far backwards, through the open window and into the rain.

Rey screamed in surprise as the water hit her face, tumbled over her in thick drops. Kylo Ren pulled her back, but she was laughing, holding her hands out to the sky, collecting the water in her palms.

"I'm sorry," he said, kissing the wetness of her face, her hair, the slippery slope of her collarbone.

"Don't be." She stared into his dark eyes, cheeks flushed, breathing fast. "I love the rain."

* * *

 _Rey was waiting for him at the end of a silver hallway, back turned. With a start he realized she was wrapped in black robes, deep and thick as pitch. Her hair was different too – long, coiled braids that rested on her head like amber snakes. He wanted to say something, ask her what had happened, but he was compelled by a strange automation to continue silently forward._

" _I finished it," she said, turning towards him with an odd glitter in her eyes. Her face was different, pale, as if all the light from it had been pulled out._

" _Show it to me," he found himself whispering. She extended her hand, wrapped her fingers around a golden hilt. It was a saberstaff, he realized, swelling with dread. He knew suddenly what color it would be._

 _Rey ignited the saber, holding it in front of her like a prize. When she finally looked up at him her eyes were as red as the humming blades._

" _Do you like it?" Ren felt the world around him turning, graying, closing. The tunnel of the hallway dissolved, narrowed into darkness again. He heard himself reply through the echo of space._

" _Yes."_

Kylo Ren shot up in bed, heart racing. It was a dream, he realized, overcome with relief. Rey was next to him, mumbling in her sleep as he moved. Her face was pink, flushed, her hair still bound in three knots. Just a dream. Doubt crept in slowly though; he remembered the way he was propelled forward, how clear and crisp and _real_ it had been. Almost as if it had already happened – or would happen.

A vision.

Jedi and Sith alike had visions of the future, he knew. What Ren didn't know – what Luke refused to tell him long ago – was if they were always inevitable. He had visions as a child, at least pictures he _called_ visions. An image of him pushing a lightsaber through a faceless man on a black catwalk. Grabbing the hand of a girl in flapping white clothes, silhouetted against golden desert sand. The same girl's eyes fading, red eyes, dimming from carmine to brown to nothing. Rey's eyes, he knew now.

Rey sighed, bringing Kylo Ren back to the present. Still half-lying on Ren's arm, she was sprawled on the hidden bed in the Falcon's crew quarters. Like the kitchen, the large bed was installed at Leia's insistence, after she grew tired of dragging a blanket onto the cushions scattered around the ship. It was strange to be sleeping where his parents did, where his mother and father fell in love, where he had now taken _this_ girl, the girl he –

Kylo Ren pried the thoughts from his head. He couldn't remember his father without a stab of regret, of a sadness so heavy it threatened to drown him if he didn't push it away. The familiar whirlwind of anger and pain started to turn in him, urging him to dig down into the shadow inside. Instead he watched Rey sleep, the way her lips parted and chest rose and fell with every breath.

They still hadn't _been_ together, not yet. He rolled on top of her in the bed last night, his head spinning with a heady, drunk desire unlike anything, even a shadow of anything, before. He felt it in her too, in the way her hands dragged down his back, how her heart raced against his chest. Wordlessly, though, both had stopped short of shedding their clothes, of trusting the want between them. There was something too fragile there, as if they balanced on a fraying thread. Rey settled against the crook of his arm, and just sleeping next to her had been more than enough.

Then there was Kylo Ren's own denial, his fear that possessing anything too tightly resulted in its eventual destruction. And now he had seen it, red-eyed Rey balancing a saberstaff, turning towards him like he had failed the best chance he ever got. _Maybe a dream and not a vision_ , something stubborn in him whispered. _And maybe the future can change._

Rey's eyes fluttered open, gazing up at him from the curve of his shoulder.

"Couldn't sleep?" She yawned, her hair loosening from the ties as she turned her head.

"Just a bad dream."

"I had a good dream. I don't remember it, though." She kissed the side of his cheek, his chin, his mouth. Ren found himself smiling again. "You were in it."

"Really?" He worked the rest of her hair loose. It fell around her face, dark and sleek. "What was I doing?" Rey stopped suddenly, frowning. She settled back against his shoulder, tracing aimless circles on his stomach.

"I'm not sure. I…" She trailed off, mouth agape. "I don't remember." Ren knew he could nudge into her mind, see the flickering images in her head laid bare. Something stopped him – an irrational fear that she had seen what he saw, red blades and red eyes and an end to everything. Impossible, of course. And yet his heart was beating fast, and a nauseous _knowing_ overfilled him with dread.

"Kylo," she said finally, twisting towards him, "tell me about the Sith."


End file.
